Telestream’s FlipFactory HD and Grass Valley’s Profile servers played a major supporting role in the production of the 78th Academy Awards ceremony broadcast live on ABC last month.

For the live stage show inside The Kodak Theatre, video server facilities company ProQue, and partners Jon Aroesty and Rick Edwards, installed and operated five Grass Valley PVS 2000 HD servers and four PDR 300 MPEG SD servers. All servers were controlled by ProQue’s Prodisk system.

The servers provided random-access playback for the show’s pre-taped segments, lower-third graphics, commercials and billboard packages, as well as the dozens of film clips that appeared on screen during the telecast. ProQue has used the Profile server to support both the Academy Awards and Grammy telecasts each year for the past 10 years.

Using Telestream’s FlipFactory HD, ProQue was able to automatically receive, convert and move a combination of HD and SD movie clips that were displayed on stage on large video screens at the Academy Awards presentation. SD and HD files replaced videotape and ingest was done automatically in the background during rehearsals.

Movies clips were converted to HD and stored on the PVS 2000 HD servers for playout on a marquee that spanned the width of the stage and included graphical elements such as the winners’ names. Telestream’s Motion Resolve up-conversion technology ensured pristine HD picture quality. FlipFactory HD was also used to transcode and deliver files to SD Profiles for playout on SD projection and plasma displays which were used as differing set pieces throughout the presentation.

The dozens of movie clips used during the production were received as digital files from post-production and graphics studios on FireWire drives. FlipFactory HD automatically picked up the files and transcoded them to specified HD and SD formats for delivery to the Profile servers.

The FAA’s current rules and proposed ban on flight over people, requirement of visual line of sight and restriction on nighttime flying, effectively prohibit broadcasters from using UAS for newsgathering. ~ WMUR-TV General Manager Jeff Bartlett